Ontario Election 2022

[DL]

I'm not sure what the knock against Horwath is. I mostly hear complaints about her from NDP members. I think she is actually a lot more popular with voters than she is with members of her own party. The people within the NDP who don't like her seem to fall into two slightly overlapping categories:

1) Highly educated party members from downtown Toronto - the types who like to think of themselves as "activists" and who are often "professors of social work" or who are members of think tanks etc... they have never been comfortable with Horwath largely for reasons of social class. She is from Hamilton and is from a very working class background and the self-styled "smart people" in the NDP tend to be more middle/upper middle class and they find her a bit too "common"

2) People from the very small but very vocal lunatic fringe far left who can't forgive her for not being some sort of female Canadian version of Jeremy Corbyn.

For all the criticism of her, she has to have done something right. She took over the leadership of the Ontario NDP after it had lost official party status in three consecutive elections and had just 9 seats - she took the party from 9 seats to 17 seats to 20 seats to 40 seats. She won more seats and a larger vote share than past leaders who are considered great icons like Stephen Lewis and Donald C. McDonald.

I don't think she is the greatest thing since sliced bread and there are other people in that caucus who could maybe do as well or even better (Marit Stiles or Catherine Fife come to mind) - but I think she has been OK and after taking the party to its second best performance ever in 2018 she deserves one more kick at the can

[DL]

These 3 leaders are so unlikeable. If I had to choose one to "have a drink with" it would probably be Ford, even though I disagree with him on almost everything.  Del Duca is so unlikeable, unattractive (I think this does matter), not to mention the pool-gate and Kirby GO stuff, people won't embrace him.  Andrea needs to lay down on the angry yelling in Queens park.  Not every issue needs to be a yelling/screaming thing.  I'll probably vote for Schreiner.  I wish we could have PEI type politics, kind, respectful, people who happen to disagree, instead of this vile kind of mudslinging that has become Ontario politics.

This is really going to be the "lesser of 3 evils" type of election.

I find people are very hard on female opposition leaders. Anytime they do their job and criticize the government, they get attacked for being "shrill" and negative in a way that a male politician would never be attacked. I've met Horwath a few times in more informal settings, she is actually pretty personable and seems like the kind of gal who likes to drink a few glasses of chardonnay and kid around with people. Even if I was not an NDP supporter I'd find her fun.

PS: You cannot have a drink with Doug Ford. He is a teetotaler and does not drink at all - given his past as a drug dealer and all the substance abuse in the Ford family, it would not surprise me if he is a recovering alcoholic.

[DL]

Now I think we both subscribe to the theory that the NDP will end up outperforming current polls once the campaign kicks off, because the Ontario Liberals are much weaker than the Liberal brand, but that's just speculation, we don't really know.

The Ontario NDP also has MUCH more money than do the Ontario Liberals which means that once the official campaign gets started the NDP will likely blow the Liberals out of the water with advertising etc...

[DL]

Who are the big star candidates this election? I know they are often announced late, but there seems to be a lack of them, barring existing political and civic figures like Ted Hsu and Irwin Elman.

What constitutes bieng a "star candidate" these days? There have been a few other semi "stars" - the NDP had former longtime Ajax mayor Steve Parish in Ajax (he was dumped as candidate today) and  Harvey Bischoff the President of OSSTF (high school teachers union) is running in for the NDP in Brantford-Brant and Irwin Elman the former child advocate of Ontario in Don Valley West.

The Green are running former Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe in University-Rosedale but i doubt she gets more than 5% of the vote...

The Liberals are running some low profile ex-city councillors here and there...but not much in the way of "supernovas" - part of the problem is that really talented accomplished people are realizing what grueling, thankless job it is to be an MPP and they just don't want to do it!  

[DL]

I'm not sure I understand how people being frustrated with Covid related restrictions is good for Doug Ford when he is the one who has imposed all the restrictions on ontario and Ontario has had the longest strictest lockdowns of any jurisdiction in North America. the anti lockdown vote will go for rightwing fringe parties. Those people see Ford as a traitor and sell-out!

[DL]

I'm not sure I understand how people being frustrated with Covid related restrictions is good for Doug Ford when he is the one who has imposed all the restrictions on ontario and Ontario has had the longest strictest lockdowns of any jurisdiction in North America. the anti lockdown vote will go for rightwing fringe parties. Those people see Ford as a traitor and sell-out!

It demobilizes young left-wing voters who are fatigued by the restrictions

Young leftwing voters in Ontario have never been "mobilized" about whether or not to lockdown in the first place and in any case, barring an unknown new variant, by the time the campaign begins in late April chances are there will be very few, if any, restrictions left in Ontario

[DL]

I have never heard the NDP or the OLP call for more lockdowns - at least not in the last year. I've heard the NDP call for more paid sick days so people can stay home if they catch Covid and not lose their livelihood. I have also heard the NDP call for more and better ventilation in schools and more systemic testing - and these have always been positioned as things we need to do to PREVENT future lockdowns, not to make them more likely.

There is no "pro lockdown" party in Ontario.

[DL]

I only know of 3 NDP MPPs nit running again, not 4

[DL]

and now it IS 4 NDP MPPs not running again. Rima Berns-McGown has announced she will not reoffer in Beaches-East York.

I think this could actually be an opportunity for the ONDP to trade up. Nothing against Rima but she was very passionate a bit of a flakey academic social justice warrior type who got the nomination unopposed in 2018 when the conventional wisdom was that the NDP would have a hard time winning back that seat. I suspect this could be a good opportunity for the NDP to run someone high profile who would be seen as "cabinet minister material"

[DL]

Rima Berns-McGown was never deputy leader, never had much of a profile and would have been totally unknown to about 99% of the population.

[DL]

According to every poll the vast majority of Ontarians supported mask and vaccine mandates.

[DL]

One of two things will happen. If Covid cases continue to fall and/or remain low then by the time we are in the campaign in May this will all be a non-issue and everyone will agree to continuing the status quo though the NDP will likely still push for more sick days and better school ventilation. But Covid will basically be a non-issue. The other possibility is that we have new wave of cases line what we now see in Europe and hospitals get overwhelmed and it’s like April 2021 all over again, in which case the NDP and Liberals get to say “I told you so” to Ford and Ford is then blamed for the disaster in the hospitals and had to impose new mandates.

[DL]

What exactly are these "woke issues" (sic.) that Sara Singh supposedly focused on as Attorney General critic two years ago? I follow Ontario politics pretty closely and i honestly have no idea what this is in reference to?

[DL]

Your points are fair, but using 2019 federal as an example (which is probably the closest proxy to this Ontario election - first-term majority government, controversial PM/premier with mid-30s approval, but not a particularly impressive opposition), we're really only talking about a marginal drop between the pre-writ polls and the final result.

Another thing to consider is the NDP's tendency to underperform polls. Even in elections where they're clearly the stronger ABC party (Layton 2011, Horwath 2018), they basically always do a bit worse on election day than what the polls suggest. In a predominantly Lib vs Con race, this probably helps the Liberals shore up support in key areas, but in a predominantly NDP vs PC race, as we both suspect is likely, NDP underperformance = Tory overperformance, as was the case in the 2018 Ontario election.

One exception to this was the 2014 Ontario election. The final polls mostly (especially IVR polls) had the NDP at around 20% and likely to lose seats and they ended up with 24% and stayed even.

[DL]

So what'd be Ontario's corresponding fixation points?  The "cancellation" of the names Dundas & Ryerson?

Perhaps, but these have not been partisan issues from what i have read. The Ford PCs never made a peep about keeping the Dundas and Ryerson names and the push for those name changes never seemed to come from the ONDP.

[DL]

What did Paul Miller do anyways to lead to not being able to run?

I don't know the details here but he had been involved in several HR-related scandals in the past and he is reputed to be a really nasty, toxic guy. Despite being from Hamilton and having the riding next door to Andrea Horwath - by all accounts he and Horwath have always detested each other - so I suspect that once there was a smoking gun, it was a very easy decision for her to dump him.

[DL]

Interesting that in Kathleen Wynne's old riding of Don Valley West - the PCs are running the black former police chief of Toronto, the NDP is running the Jewish former Child Advocate of Ontario and the Ontario Liberals are running a generic corporate executive who no one has ever heard of. 

[DL]

Interesting that in Kathleen Wynne's old riding of Don Valley West - the PCs are running the black former police chief of Toronto, the NDP is running the Jewish former Child Advocate of Ontario and the Ontario Liberals are running a generic corporate executive who no one has ever heard of. 

Kind of surprised that she didn't resign as an MP during her term. What has she been doing for the last four years?

Especially since the Liberals picked a new leader del Duca who has no seat in the legislature! Of course a big complication might have been that while Ford was extremely unpopular during his first two years in office, the pandemic (which coincided with Del Duca becoming OLP leader) put everything into a state of flux. I still think that a byelection in Don Valley West with Del Duca running would likely have been an easy Liberal hold...but as for why Wynne stuck around - maybe she actually likes being in the leg and has no other obvious job to switch to

[DL]

Paul Miller will run as an independent in Hamilton East - Stoney Creek, wonder if this will split the vote at all.

There have been a number of cases of MPPs or MPs being dumped by their party and then running as an independent. In that vast, vast majority of cases they get a couple of hundred votes and learn the hard way that 99% of the people who voted for them in the past only voted for them because of the party they represented and their personal vote was negligible.

Once in a blue moon you get an exception like in the case of Judy Wilson-Raybouldt. But those cases are very rare   

[DL]

Hard to say what will happen in this election - none of the leaders are particularly liked or are inspiring Ontarians.  Most likely NDP ends up in third though.

I'm pretty sure the Liberals will come in third. The NDP has 36 incumbents running for re-election, the Liberals have 5. the NDP has something like triple the money that the Liberals have. Also, Liberal candidate recruitment has been very unimpressive. If they are to have any hope at all of making a comeback and overtaking the NDP they need to reclaim the three downtown Toronto seats they lost in 2018 - and in all three: University-Rosedale, Toronto Centre and Spadina-Fort York the Liberals are running totally unknown people with no name recognition of any kind

To the extent that people are saying they would vote fore the Ontario Liberals in any polls - its because they think they are voting for Justin Trudeau. The moment people see Steven Del Duca on a stage their vote will collapse. He has totally devoid of any appeal and as much as i hate to dwell on physical appearances - the guy is incredibly ugly and has a weird facial twitch that will be a major turn off.

[DL]

NDP really screwed up in Ajax, arguably the most winnable non-Brampton/Oshawa 905 suburb.

I agree, but you can point to at least one riding where each party has "screwed up". I doubt very much that Ajax will be the difference between the NDP coming in second or third - or for that matter be the difference between the PC majority or hung legislature

[DL]

I could see the following scenario - week one of the campaign people see Del Duca in living colour and turn up their noses at him like a cat being served a flavour of cat food it doesn't like. Then polls come out showing the Liberals firmly in third place it becomes clear that the NDP is the main opposition to the PCs - that accelerates the flow of "promiscuous progressives" to the NDP.

Obviously if the PCs are over 40% in the popular vote they will win a majority no matter what. But if they are down in the 35-36 range and the NDP is low 30s and the Liberals are low 20s...I got see the Liberals winning back some upscale exurban seats from the PCs like Oakville or Burlington or Vaughan-Woodbridge (where del Duca will run) and if the NDP has a good campaign they could win some seats where they were very close in 2018 and get the PCs under 65 seats. So I could see a scenario where the PCs get 60 seats, the NDP 45 and the Liberals 20 or so. The Liberal vote is very inefficient in Ontario so even if the Liberal and NDP had identical vote shares (which they won't), the NDP would likely get more seats. I think back to the 2011 federal election when the NDP and Liberals each had 25% of the vote in Ontario and that yielded 22 NDP seats and 11 Liberal seats

I just find it hard to see the Ontario Liberals gaining much ground when they are flat broke, have a repulsive leader and a conspicuous lack of "star candidates". Who knows maybe I'm wrong and Del Duca-mania will sweep the province, but I doubt it.

[DL]

I was a bit surprised that Yarde lost renomination...I know that he did not live in the riding and did not seem to have a huge profile, but its very very rare for NDP incumbents to be challenged let alone lose renomination (though it did happen to a few "accidental" MPs and MLAs who won unexpectedly in wave election like NDP Quebec 2011 and NDP Alberta 2015 and who were clearly never cut out for the job). My impression is that the staff at party HQ usually find ways to disqualify any nuisance candidates wanting to run against an incumbent unless the incumbent is really mediocre and/or the challenger is a great catch! Not sure if that is the case here. 

[DL]

Some palpable anger in the Black community over Yarde's ouster:

https://twitter.com/LauraMaeLindo/status/1512803181885014017

https://twitter.com/blackvotecanada/status/1512256582410805249

This seems a bit silly. There is a democratic process whereby nomination contests are held and the leader does not have the power to wave a magic wand and say "I arbitrarily refuse to allow anyone to challenge Kevin Yarde". If Horwath had tried to do that, she would have been accused of anti-South Asian racism by the supporters of the guy who won the nomination.

According to the Toronto Star article the challenger took 88% of the vote in the Brampton North nomination vote - no word on how many votes were cast. My first reaction is that Yarde obviously didn't do a very good job of building up his own riding association

[DL]

The ONDP numbers in Don Valley West were artificially high last time after it was clear Kathleen would be stepping down and admitted defeat before the election, many thought she might even resign the seat after the election.  The NDP is usually below 10% in this riding which helps OLP.

On the other hand in 2018 the NDP just ran a "paper candidate" in DVW and spent no money and put no resources in. This time the NDP is running Irwin Elman the former Ontario Child Advocate and they seem to be prioritizing the riding. Interesting that both the PCs and NDP are running and star candidates while the Liberals a running a complete nobody in that seat.